Olga Tokarczuk

I'm too neurotic to be a therapist.

— Olga Tokarczuk

I love crossing borders.

— Olga Tokarczuk

I got my first passport in 1989, when I was 28.

— Olga Tokarczuk

It's impossible to be ethnically pure.

— Olga Tokarczuk

I think the deepest level of our freedom is being able to change our identity.

— Olga Tokarczuk

Flights' grew out of a time when I was travelling a lot.

— Olga Tokarczuk

I adore Stanley Kubrick, all of his films were different, not just in subject but tonally.

— Olga Tokarczuk

I didn't believe that the Soviet Union would ever break down.

— Olga Tokarczuk

The views I have, the books I write, are read as political, or even as manifestos.

— Olga Tokarczuk

I'm not one of those people who easily judges something or someone.

— Olga Tokarczuk

To write is to look for very particular, specific points of view on reality.

— Olga Tokarczuk

We can feel in Poland a kind of phantom pain for lost multi-ethnic territories.

— Olga Tokarczuk

“S gledišta prirode nema korisnih i nekorisnih bića. To je samo glupavo razlikovanje koje primjenjuju ljudi." str. 156.”

— Olga Tokarczuk

I think I always have many ideas for books in my head. It's like a forest full of mushrooms. Some are big,…

— Olga Tokarczuk

Reality is like a doughnut: Everything that is good and funny and juicy is outside the center, which is just emptiness.

— Olga Tokarczuk

I don't have a clear biography of my own that I could recount in an interesting way. I'm made up of the…

— Olga Tokarczuk

I like to come back to the science fiction of Stanislaw Lem. He is comforting but also funny, and although I know…

— Olga Tokarczuk

I dream of Poland becoming a modern society that is defined not by the crippling nature of history, but by our individual…

— Olga Tokarczuk

Polish culture has always had a strong anti-Semitic undercurrent. There has been awful persecution.

— Olga Tokarczuk

A novel should tell a story, be a pleasure to read, and at the same time it should be thought-provoking, even a…

— Olga Tokarczuk

I write books to open people's minds, to present new perspectives, to make people realize that what they think is obvious is…

— Olga Tokarczuk

“Speaking does harm, sows confusion and weakens things that are obvious. Speaking makes me tremble inside. I don't think I have ever…

— Olga Tokarczuk

“Uvečer promatram Veneru, podrobno pratim promjene te lijepe Gospođice. Više je volim kao večernju zvijezdu, kada se pojavljuje niotkud, kao začarana, i…

— Olga Tokarczuk

Unfortunately, as hate speech has proliferated, no one in Poland has been held responsible. The police take people's statements and dismiss them.…

— Olga Tokarczuk

Well-written novels make you more empathetic towards other people. You can identify with someone who isn't you. You can change your identity.…

— Olga Tokarczuk

Everything that was interesting was outside of Poland. Great music, art, film, hippies, Mick Jagger. It was impossible even to dream of…

— Olga Tokarczuk

We know so much about planets and the universe and small particles and we do not know anything about the inner state…

— Olga Tokarczuk

There is no official censorship in literature, but I feel a certain fear when I see that a kind of self-censorship is…

— Olga Tokarczuk

“Sjedili smo u vrtu ispod stare jabuke na kojoj su se već zametnuli plodovi. Vrt je mirisao i šumorio. Izgubila sam osjećaj…

— Olga Tokarczuk

“Nekoliko dana mi je jako nedostajao – njegova kozmetika u kupaonici i čak njegove prazne šalice čaja koje je ostavljao po cijeloj…

— Olga Tokarczuk

“Treba imati otvorene oči i uši, povezivati činjenice, vidjeti sličnosti tamo gdje drugi vide potpunu različitost, pamtiti da se s tanoviti događaji…

— Olga Tokarczuk

“It's clear that the largest things are contained in the smallest. There can be no doubt about it. At this very moment,…

— Olga Tokarczuk

“Sada mi se razjasnilo zašto čeke, streljačke tornjeve, koji uostalom jako podsjećaju na stražarske tornjeve u koncentracijskim logorim, nazivaju amboni – propovjedaonice.…

— Olga Tokarczuk

“There were corporeal, psychic, and spiritual people. Somatics, psychics, and pneumatics, they called them, from the Greek. Equality goes against nature, however…

— Olga Tokarczuk

“Below the mill the rivers merge. First they flow close beside each other, undecided, overawed by their longed-for intimacy, and then they…

— Olga Tokarczuk

“Držim, naime, da je ljudska psiha stvorena da nas obrani od sagledavanja istine. Da nam ne dopusti izravno sagledati mehanizam. Psiha je…

— Olga Tokarczuk

Polish literature can be interesting to the world. I'm happy to be the trailblazer.

— Olga Tokarczuk

“(...) ograniczenie umysłowe i okrucieństwo ludzkie nie zna granic.”

— Olga Tokarczuk

I found Leonora Carrington's 'The Hearing Trumpet' really funny.

— Olga Tokarczuk

I have never met anyone who wasn't confused inside.

— Olga Tokarczuk